The Sweeper Girl and the Dragon Lady
by ZutarianNaiad
Summary: She couldn't watch her soul-mate spend his life with the wrong woman, even if that woman was the terrifying daughter of Toph Bei Fong.


She had to be the scariest woman Pema had ever seen.

Some women would carry the shadow of Toph Bei Fong's daughter as a burden—the burden to be the strongest o character, the most skilled, the bravest of women in the world. To live their lives as their mother's shadow. To feel the pressure of her fame, to force her chin up and a glint into her eyes for the sake of the public.

Some women would take the freedom of admitting that the burden of being a second Toph Bei Fong is simply too great, and would have taken a mother's leniency in pursuing flower arranging and using her intelligence for politics as a non-contact sport.

Lin Beifong… Lin Beifong was simply terrifying. Her mother brought metalbending to light as a possibility, Lin Beifong mastered the art and perfected the style before entering university. She had the determination to choose a commoner's single last name after her father in front of one of the oldest and most prestigious Earth Kingdom families in living or dead memory. She had the strength to start filling her mother's place in politics the day after her mother's death was announced to the public.

…She had the independence to turn down proposals from the day she was born. In the right circles, the story of her spitting on her first suitor (who was twelve at the day of her birth) when she was one week old, a remarkable distance of three feet. (Her mother had sagely decided never to confirm or deny the story, but her father was known to correct an exaggerated detail here and there). She had punched the Earth Queen's son in the nose for daring to steal her fist kiss at her seventh birthday. She had denied the advances of The Iron Mole in underground bending tournaments and in the public eye, with varying degrees of terseness and then casual violence until he mysteriously stopped. She had been seen about town with an up-and-coming politician, though not after he declared sentiment of a lasting interest in her to the papers. Most astonishingly, she had been with the Avatar's airbending son for years without accepting the proposals he undoubtedly made once out of the public eye.

On paper, it seemed a fairytale. The Last Airbender's not-so-last airbending son and the daughter of the Blind Bandit, Hero of the Hundred Years War, perfect opposites meant to complement one another exactly.

But that was just what the public eye saw. The public eye didn't see Lin Beifong visit Air Temple Island. Didn't see the lunchbox tucked under her arm to share, like a school girl instead of the full meal a wife would cook. Didn't see her allow him to put a sprig of dogwood in her hair. Didn't see her granite disposition soften when Tenzin laughed.

But the sweeper girl saw. The sweeper girl who had perfected meditative breathing so she could watch the back of his head during the meditation hours on Air Temple Island. The sweeper girl who had learned every dish he liked, every vegetable he didn't, which fruits he liked mixed, and which ones he secretly liked sugared. Knew exactly his hours. Knew that he didn't actually want to propose to Lin Beifong anymore, but did it as a matter of course.

And then Pema couldn't be scared anymore. She couldn't be terrified of the Dragon Lady, she couldn't lose sleep anymore, and she couldn't read into Tenzin's mannerisms things that weren't there anymore. What she could do was screw her courage to the sticking place (she'd heard the expression before, and it was beginning to make sense), set a date she didn't think that Beifong would be there, practice a speech she knew she would forget the instant she tried to start it, and simply do her best.

And Spirits was she scared.

A/N: …Heh heh… Pretty much the first piece of fan fiction in… years. Yep. (Do people even still do Authors' Notes?) Anyway. Please enjoy my headcanon until the day the show proves me wrong or right. (And just because I write ships doesn't mean I ship them, kiddos.)


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